Danger's Kiss Read Online Free

shifted on the bench and his head lolled toward her.  She tightened her grip on the knife, ready to defend herself.  He grunted once but thankfully remained asleep.
    Now that he faced her, she could see the monster that the hood of the black cloak had concealed, and the closer she drew to him, the more her fingers faltered on the dagger.
    He wasn’t the slope-headed, heavy-browed, pox-scarred mongrel she’d imagined.  And he was much younger than she’d thought, probably not yet thirty years of age.  His swarthy cheeks were lean and sturdily boned, his nose slightly aquiline, his mouth generous.
    Dark hair fell in unruly locks across his brow and along his neck, and his wide jaw was in need of a shave.  A thin white scar ran along his chin, a second marked his forehead, and the fresh cut she’d given him high on his cheekbone was surrounded now by a blackening bruise.  But nothing could mar the undeniable rugged handsomeness of his face.
    She wondered absently if his eyes were as black as they’d seemed in the village square.
    From the corner of her vision, Desirée saw something white suddenly streak past the hearth.  Startled, she sucked in a loud breath.  Too late she realized it was only a cat.

    Nicholas didn’t know what woke him.  He’d thought he was in a dead sleep.  But what he glimpsed, peering beneath his drowsy lids, made his eyes widen at once.
    A maid stood over him with a dagger.  Granted, she was distracted at the moment, glaring at the hearth.  But there was no mistaking her intent.
    Before she could act on that intent, he lifted up his sleep-dead left arm and seized her wrist.
    She shrieked in surprise.
    He clapped his right hand over the narrow guard of the dagger, intending to pry the weapon loose.  But the wily wench twisted in his grip and withdrew the blade, slicing the webbing between his thumb and finger.
    He hissed in pain, making a second grab for her with his left hand, catching the folds of her skirt.
    She tugged away, and when she couldn’t tug loose, she slashed downward with the dagger.  He pulled his hand back in time to avoid another slash, and she made a gash in her skirt instead.
    Fully awake now, he vaulted to his feet.
    She should have fled in fear.  He was twice her size.  One backward sweep of his arm could knock the scrawny wench unconscious against the wall.  But she only stared at him, her gaze as wild and piercing as that of a mother swan protecting her brood from a wolf.
    He narrowed his eyes in sudden recognition.  “You!”  His fingers went involuntarily to the wound she’d inflicted upon him earlier.
    To his astonishment, one corner of her lip curled up smugly.
    His hand stung like the devil, and blood was dripping down his palm, but he still had one good hand.  That was all he required to subdue the spindly damsel.
    He seized her by the throat, his fingers wrapping easily around her tiny neck, and picked her up.
    Like an indignant kitten, she hissed and squirmed and tried to stab at him.  But with his injured hand, he caught her wrist and applied pressure till she dropped the weapon.  Then he kicked it, sending the dagger skittering halfway across the room.
    She scrabbled furiously at his arm.  He wasn’t strangling her, not yet, but one squeeze of his fingers would be all it took.  Fortunately for the wench, unlike her , he wasn’t a cold-blooded murderer.
    But she didn’t need to know that.
    “I could snap your neck like kindling, child,” he growled.
    “You don’t scare me!” she choked out with remarkable bravado.  “And I’m no child!”
    He blinked.  It was true.  He could see now she was endowed with the ripe curves of a woman full-grown.  But what was wrong with the maid?  Was she diseased in the head?  No one challenged Nicholas Grimshaw.  People fled from him in terror.  She should have been begging for his mercy, not inciting him with taunts.  After all, she was little more than a mouse in his deadly